London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

Journalist Peter Nash, creator of the Striker comic strip, told a scary tale at this week’s thanksgiving service for Seamus Potter, Fleet Street veteran and most recently chief sub-editor at the Standard’s international desk, at St Bride’s.

Nash described a trip from Liverpool to Dublin in 1979 for the wedding of a Western Daily Press colleague. “A few hours into the sailing, with Liverpool barely in sight and buoyed by a bravado fuelled by too many vodkas, I suggested it might be an idea if we were to swim the rest of the way. More sensible companions were having none of it. But I badgered them until Seamus tried to humour me by saying that if I decided to go, he’d be right behind me.”

Nash jumped into the ferry’s wake fully clothed only to see Liverpool was further than it had seemed. Potter stripped down to his underpants and dived into the wash. “The crew took to the lifeboats while helicopters were scrambled by the coastguard,” said Nash, who was unconscious when he was found.

But Seamus was defiant: “‘Go away,’ he said, ‘I’m swimming to Liverpool.’”

Alarmingly, the story was already on the front page of their paper when the pair got back to work in Bristol.